← The Trojan Horse

The Podcast

In The Belly

Conversations on the mechanisms underneath M&A. Guests are being booked now; episodes appear here as they are cut.

  1. No. I

    Why Models Fail

    A discounted cash flow is right up until it meets a business. Where it breaks first, why the failure is almost never arithmetic, and what a forecast is actually claiming when it says growth costs nothing.

    Recording October
  2. No. II

    Sleep As Capital

    The analyst at three in the morning is a depreciating asset nobody books. What the sleep research says about judgement under deprivation, and whether a desk that runs on it is buying output or borrowing against it.

    In production
  3. No. III

    The Adjusted Truth

    Adjusted EBITDA excludes whatever management has decided is unusual. Who audits the definition of unusual, and what happens to a multiple when the denominator is a choice.

    In production
  4. No. IV

    Managing The Number

    Companies rarely fake earnings. They shape them. The entirely legal machinery for landing on consensus, and why the quarter you cannot see is the interesting one.

    In production
  5. No. V

    Who Picks Comparables

    Every comp set is an argument about what a company is. Change the peers and you change the answer, and almost nobody shows their working.

    In production
  6. No. VI

    Writers Make Bankers

    Underneath the models the job is persuasive narrative. What separates good writing from great, and why nobody tells you that on the way in.

    Recording October
  7. No. VII

    The Confidence Trap

    Two methods agreeing feels like proof. Often it is one assumption counted twice, wearing a second coat.

    In production
  8. No. VIII

    Disconnected

    Build something genuinely complicated with the internet switched off. A running experiment in what recall costs when retrieval is free.

    In production